² So Sarai said to Abram, “The Lord has prevented me from having children. Go and sleep with my servant. Perhaps I can have children through her.” And Abram agreed with Sarai’s proposal.

⁴ “If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave and they had sons or daughters, then only the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master.

¹⁰ Then one of them said, “I will return to you about this time next year, and your wife, Sarah, will have a son!”

Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent.

¹⁷ And to the man he said,

¹¹ Then the elders and all the people standing in the gate replied, “We are witnesses! May the Lord make this woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, from whom all the nation of Israel descended! May you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem.

²² Then God remembered Rachel’s plight and answered her prayers by enabling her to have children.

⁹ Meanwhile, Leah realized that she wasn’t getting pregnant anymore, so she took her servant, Zilpah, and gave her to Jacob as a wife. ¹⁰ Soon Zilpah presented him with a son.

² Then Jacob became furious with Rachel. “Am I God?” he asked. “He’s the one who has kept you from having children!”

³ Then Rachel told him, “Take my maid, Bilhah, and sleep with her. She will bear children for me,^[a] and through her I can have a family, too.” ⁴ So Rachel gave her servant, Bilhah, to Jacob as a wife, and he slept with her.

²¹ Isaac pleaded with the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was unable to have children. The Lord answered Isaac’s prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twins.